Posts by John Tserkezis

Re: Quite Clever

"No-one except TVR, perhaps!"

The Cerbera didn't come with airbags. Presumably, because it was designed as a race car, in the event you hit anything, the airbags will be wearing you for protection anyway.

Re: Hmm, it's small

"How well can it take some beating. The question is, is it made to last.'

It's $99 at the retail level. You guess how hardy it is.

Re: Skin temperature 29 deg?

"Or maybe it needs some remote probe, that can be put into the ... mouth?!?'

We need to measure your body temperature, bend over and relax, and we won't tell anyone, promise.

Trust us, we are Samsung.

Re: Endurance?

"[you can ask a Nand chip 'who made you']"

Remember, there are fakes around. Writeable CDs and DVDs are plauged by this problem, you read the manufacturer ID as someone reputable, but in fact, it was made in someone's backyard.

I've seen fake transistors (low-spec q's replaced the proper silicon), fake ICs (that actually did nothing), Even seen tops of ICs sanded off with new "regular label" printing on top. They worked, but you had no idea what black magic (or running hamsters) were inside - especially not why it was "rebranded" in the first place.

Re: Autonegotiate over 8+ different bandwidths?

"Autonegotation over 10 (if supported)"

Auto negotiating speeds isn't the issue. It's more how vendor A handles it, vs how vendor B handles it, and how they work together (or not work as the case may be). There's not only speed, there's full/half duplex, whether one side is willing to auto negotiate, and, if there's a mix, it's up to the auto negotiator to find out what's going on. And everyone handles it a bit different.

Depending on what you read, some make it look like it's a wonder it works at all.

"Interesting, I've been using VM all weekend and I haven't noticed a thing. Everything fine."

Try taking off your Zaphod Beeblebrox anti panic glasses first.

"I'm sure I've blocked certain people appearing in news feeds"

I've been blocking everybody from facebook: I don't have an account. Works real well.

Re: Bogus

"to issue a patent to anyone who submits the correct paperwork,"

And pays their fees. Don't forget the most important part!

Re: Gold-plated?

"It's for the super rich. At 5K per watch? I really don't think it is."

Considering their past performance on battery replacements, your you-beute $5K gold watch is only going to be useful for several years.

"Worst was the final season or two of Warehouse 13, where they sold out for product placement for some car (I think it was a Toyota..."

It was of all cars, the bloody Prius.

My favorite bit was how they used the "built-in" sat nav to navigate within the Warehouse. Under the iron roof.

Then, they try to Evil Knevil style jump the Prius, with clear warnings you should not try this at home. Shame, that's pretty much all the car is good for. And remember everyone who downvotes for that comment needs a "Smug Alert!". If you don't know what I mean, look at South Park. If you don't know wha that is, the fact you drive a Prius is the least of your concerns, you need help.

Re: Wrong Target?

"If people want to remove embarassing information they have to get the website to remove it. I know that this is impossible but frankly getting Google to censor information makes me feel uneasy."

True, and it maintains the possibility of someone else keeping track of the link-that-shall-not-be-named.

There are two recent cases that come to mind of "right to be forgotten" laws that were enacted and reported in one of our fairfax papers. They pretty much outlined the entire incedent, what happend, why they want it scrubbed and how to find this information. The Streisand effect came to mind first, then the fact the paper itself is searchable and outside the control of the Google laws. Mainly because the paper's search function is a core feature for paid users - if you can't search for stories, then why the hell are you paying for it?

Re: I just don't get these new TLD's

"I don't see how consumers/interested parties will get to your site by guessing."

You don't. That's what google/bing/et al is for. Guessing didn't even work back in the old days when there were so few domains you may have tried to guess.

"I understand it allows resellers to make money from the gullible, but if you are considering one of these domains, ask yourselves what benefits the investment will make to your customers?"

Nothing. If they're using Google to look for you, they just click the link. If it's a Q-Code, they don't click a damn thing. If it's written in a magazine, they just repeat it. With the market flooded with .com domains, it'll get past the 'curious' stage really quickly.

My point is, stapling a huge price tag on something (especially when the customer doesn't see any of that) means nothing - it does the same job as all the garden variety TLDs.

Re: When can we see the apologies?

"but if one of my computers goes TU, the first question that occurs to me is "what have we just changed?"

This only works if you're a tinkerer, and you're changing things all the time.

I constantly get "my tv/car/toaster/whatever is broken, and I have no idea at all what's wrong - it was working fine yesterday".

Firstly, the "I have no idea why" is moot, because you're not trained, qualified, instructed or experienced in the device to make a judgement like that. Secondly, the fact it was "working fine yesterday" is no indicator into what went wrong. Faults are like that.

Re: 20 .au IPv6 domains

"20 .au IPv6 domains. That is … embarrassing."

Pretty much explains why we'll never get IPv6 outside world capability for domestic users - we're at the whim of our ISPs.

This is way beyond naming and shaming, and approaches "can't happen, don't try".

Re: I am somewhat comforted

"BTW, after the secret TPP is rammed through, copyright infringements will be criminal offences."

They already are. Sorry, did you miss that? So did everyone else - they passed it at the same time as the "relaxed" VCR/PVR recording changes. Now copyright infringement isn't a civil issue anymore, it's criminal.

Rather convenient the media (and everyone else) skipped that bit when telling us that recording a TV program to watch the next day is legal now (after we've been doing for 20 years), and how great the changes are. The bastards.

Re: Well of course...

"... after all, who else is going to protect us from all those paedo-terrerrist-drug-dealers out there?"

You forgot about the software and media pirates. If the software, music, video and other media mongouls are anything to go by, THEY'RE the paedos, terrorists and druggos.

Re: Twitter Joke

"Guess what, if you don't want someone to pay attention to what you say, then don't say it on the internet. How stupid are these people?"

I need to put my 2c in here.

I've had more than my fair share of firends who were either suicidal, or had suicided. None of them, not even close, where drama queens or attention seekers. But then again, none of them were social media users either.

Take from that what you will (Facebook, Twitter et al, kills brain cells).

"It's not as if WiFi ever gets remotely close to the maximum theoretical bit rate"

A computer rag did some speed tests a while back on the then new AC routers, and found unless you were no more than several feet away, you are never going to get the fastest speed it's capable of (and as you said, nowhere the "theoretical" speeds).

Once you go past a couple of walls, and a couple of dozen metres distance that would be typical in a home setup, the speeds drop to just barely over what cat5 could do. And considering Cat5e is "good enough" for ethernet gigabit speeds over short lengths, not only does cable win, it's by far more reliable, stable, and repeatable than wifi.

WiFi is useful for convenicence, and it has its place there, but if you want speed and stability, stop reading the bullshit theoretical numbers and use cable.

Re: Really in the post KitKat World.... (Or the shape of things to come?)

"Whats the point of even having External SD anymore?"

I have a 64Gb card nearly full up with maps, PDFs and other data that is either not suitbable for cloud storage, or I do not want it on cloud storage for security reasons anyway. Soon, I'll be considering one of those newfangled 128G cards too.

64G phones are rare, or so stupidly expensive it's not worth it, but even if I had one *right now*, I'd be about full up to the brim anyway - so it's not good for me anyway.

My only option is to use an external card you you say there is no point of.

Without that slot, I will not be buying that phone, and from the looks of things, I'm not alone with those thoughts.

Re: No Range safety boats?

"To be fair afaik the military have no right to force you out of the firing area, they can ask politely but you can choose not to and they'll have to wait."

That's hardly conductive to a result now isn't it?

How about "We're firing in 10 minutes. If you hang around till then, we would recommend you put yourself in the brace position and kiss your arse goodbye. Thank you and come again.".

I'm quite sure their fishing would take a lower priority then.

Re: They did exactly what they should have done

"This is a perfect example of the airlines and authorities doing exactly what they should"

The WiFi access point wasn't even on the plane in question. We're dealing with dumb asses who shoot first and ask questions later.